Stories Of The Paranormal, The Unexplained, And All Things Incredible

November 6, 2012

Eyeless Sight


     This is a very interesting article on devising 'whiskers' to be worn on fingers to help blind people see. Interesting but still dependant on an external aid when the human body can miraculously adapted to an incredible amount of disability - including blindness.
      Throughout recorded history, and probably earlier, certain people without eyesight have been able to 'see' through the skin on various areas of their bodies. This, it seems to me, is a more worthy area to spend time and money researching.
· In the 17th century Irish scientist Robert Boyle recounted the case of a man who could identify colours through touch.
· In the 18th century, the first Europeans to reach Samoa reported that blind islanders were able to describe their appearance.
· In 1808, Dr. Petetin of Lyons, France documented eight cases of women whose sense had become localized in the their finger tips and the solar plexus region in his book Electricite Animale.
· In 1893 Brooklyn New York, doctors described how blind Mollie Fancher read printed material with her fingeripts. At approximately the same time in Italy, neurologist, Dr. Cesare Lombroso, treated a 14-year old blind girl; who could ‘see’ with her left earlobe and the tip of her nose.
      French scientist Jules Romains was intrigued by such reports. In 1920, after spending years in experimentation he published a long treatise on the phenomenon: Eyeless Sight. He noted that some people needed to touch the objects with their fingertips, cheeks and even their stomachs in order to 'see' them. Others could 'see' without making contact with what they were 'looking' at. Dr Romain's opion was that sight without eyes may be somehow connected to the microscopic nerve ends in the skin known as Ranvier's menisci.